Public health concerns a lot more than visits to the doctor. Folks like Olatorera Adeniji are part of a movement of public health modernization to address public health in a more wholistic sense.
This episode, Ola Adeniji, from Lane County Public Health's Community Partnerships Program, breaks down a few aspects of public health. She also talks about some of the different parts of her work in supporting community partnerships.
To find out more about the Community Partnerships Program, visit the website here.
Check out the newsletter here.
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
Public health concerns a lot more than visits to the doctor. Folks like Olatorera Adeniji are part of a movement of public health modernization to address public health in a more wholistic sense.
This episode, Ola Adeniji, from Lane County Public Health's Community Partnerships Program, breaks down a few aspects of public health. She also talks about some of the different parts of her work in supporting community partnerships.
To find out more about the Community Partnerships Program, visit the website here.
Check out the newsletter here.
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
You're listening to white bird mutual aid. I'm Hana Francis. And this show we speak with local organizations that work directly with their community to get basic needs met. This episode, I speak with Olatorera Adeniji, who works for Lane County Public Health, and the relatively new Community Partnerships Program. This is the first of two episodes with Olatorera. And in this episode, we discuss what public health is, and a little bit about the Community Partnerships Program.
Olatorera Adeniji:Yeah, my name is Olatorera Adeniji. My pronouns are she hers. And my job title is outreach coordinator for the Community Partnerships Program.
Hana Francis:The Community Partnerships Program was started in October of 2021.
Olatorera Adeniji:Right, so community partnerships actually came from this idea behind public health modernization, which is a statewide initiative from Oregon Health Authority. And essentially, is a funding stream and intentional funding stream that is going to add more dollars and infrastructure to judging up public health a little bit. There are some foundational capabilities that were prioritized, established, and one of them has happens to be community partners and community partnerships. And so it's nice to know that, you know, our program, community partnerships came from this idea of really trying to evolve the way that public health currently is, and to really having it be more community focused and community centered and led so that it feels nice that we have you know, statewide backing that there's funding, and the initiative is there and wants to be there. First, you need to need to do the work. So we really, as program just envision Lane County as a place where all people can achieve their fullest potential. Because we've eliminated inequities that weren't created by you know, our history of colonialism, slavery and genocide. And we just really hope to, you know, help co create, with our partners, a community where everyone's basic needs are met and we can thrive.
Hana Francis:The community partnerships team is small, but growing
Olatorera Adeniji:myself, my boss, Mo young, and our epidemiologist Jennifer Webster,
Hana Francis:the position that Ola has there as outreach coordinator seems to be a great fit for the many fields that she has become an expert in.
Olatorera Adeniji:Um, I've been forced dumping my way around the state, from different public health emergency to emergency. I actually started out with the rent rent rental crisis in Portland, I helped write some guidance around no-cause evictions, and then I um I was in Multnomah County, and then they bounced over the Oregon Health Authority to help out with some messaging on the extreme levels of cadmium and lead and arsenic that were being that were coming from the smokestacks, glass factories. And then I took a brief break and had a baby, came back down to Eugene and I wanted to just be a contact tracer for COVID. And I was like, Yeah, I've got applicable skills. I have undergraduate degrees and Black Studies, community health, education and social Sciences. And so when I was attending those trees, and people were like, What are you going to do with all those and I was like, I don't know, maybe help out my community in the apocalypse. And then it happens kinda COVID. A curated these does these degrees to actually be exactly where I am helping my community in public health. And so when this position and kind of everything came to fruition, I really want to say it was like more of a call to the universe of being in the right place at the right time and really, truly feel I'm supposed to be on this timeline right now helping out with this program. So it's super exciting. But yeah, just wanting to be able to help out my community. Originally, I had grand ideas of being a doctor, and we grew up without insurance. We were underinsured most of the time and just seeing the way my family was treated when we went to the emergency room to seek medical care that probably could be seen by you know, PCP, but if you're out underinsured or uninsured don't have that. And just really thinking like, there's got to be a better way there's got to be, I mean, I don't want to be the Savior at the end who's like chastising folks for not getting there fast enough, that doesn't feel good. You know, there has to be a more upstream approach to catch folks that have earlier interventions, that doesn't mean, you know, ending up in the emergency room for high blood pressure. So that's when I really focused and switched my attention to public health, and really wanted to work in that direction. So my heart's in EJ work. And that's kind of where I started, I guess as far as like rental increases and environmental health and you know, air quality. But I think it's all super connected. And no, yeah, I just kind of end up where I need to be and make the best of it. And I'm stoked for this program. It's exciting. It feels like I'm supposed to be here.
Hana Francis:So let's define public health. I think a lot more falls under that category than then many people, including myself, really, really think about on a daily basis,
Olatorera Adeniji:right. Public health is kind of everything. You know, we've really been, you know, ours a, you know, Lane County Public Health, you probably miss out on the community really involved within the COVID response. If you could remember back to a couple of years ago, when the big white tents, you know, at the fairgrounds, and you know, we had drive thru clinics. And, you know, we rarely they're kind of trying to get as many COVID vaccines as we could out as soon as we got, you know, the green light and the federal funding and the COVID. So you're probably familiar with us in that aspect. But public health itself, there's a lot of programs and departments that we serve. We have a program called Family Child Health, which deals with, you know, birthing parents, folks that are chests feeding early educational programs for parents. And then we also have, you know, a preparedness program to help folks with like wildfire disasters, smoke, see what else we also have a communicable disease clinic, which you saw a little bit of the response with COVID. But we also deal with like STI outbreaks. We also have, you know, a full clinic to help kids get into schools, as far as vaccinations go, what else is public health, public health has been gun violence, public health is you know, the infant formula shortage that happened public health is clean water, public health is clean air public health is seatbelts. Public health is everything. And so really just having the opportunity to be in a position where you can really continue to advocate that message that public health, we aren't just there for natural disasters or unnatural disasters, we're there you know, and available to community partners 365 days of the year.
Hana Francis:The Community Partnerships Program was formed for several reasons, but one of the most pressing areas in need of modernization is this area of social inequities. Many Black indigenous Latin X and communities of color have experienced disproportionate effects of the COVID 19 pandemic. A government study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, called the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States, says Black Latinx and American Indian persons have been hospitalized and died at a higher rate than white persons, consistently from the start of the pandemic. This has been traced to many different origins, but is in part due to lack of access to health care and hospitals and communities of color, distrust of the health care system, which is rooted in historic racism in the medical industrial complex, and exposure due to the large number of essential workers who are bipoc, many of whom were not afforded PTO. On the Lane County website, the Community Partnerships Program mission is written. The Community Partnerships Program, envisions Lane County as a place where we have eliminated inequities that were created by our histories of colonialism, slavery and genocide. And we have co created with our partners, a community where everyone can achieve their fullest potential. Your program is kind of trying to make it community focused and community led like you said, and I think to me, that means a lot of like making sure Access is equitable, and that everyone's kind of getting what they need. Last time, we sort of talked about how, like systemic racism is a huge public health issue. And I just wonder if you could speak a little bit more to that about, like how the history of systemic racism has really been, like, highlighted and intensified during the pandemic, and steps that y'all are taking to address that.
Olatorera Adeniji:Yeah, our commissioners declared public health or sorry, racism as a public health crisis. Last year, our department has been working closely with our communications department within public health, to really highlight the initiative and highlight the work that we're doing past just making a declaration, right, trying to make it more of just a bit more than just a virtue signal. So we're working closely with the communications department to actually develop a website about specifically about anti racism, and, you know, highlighting some of the historical paths, missteps, obviously, the the counties made. And it's nice to work within a framework, one of our values is that, you know, we are committed to the work of anti racism within our department. And so it's nice to have folks on board. So we don't shy away from like, the historical truths and the systemic systemic oppression that, you know, folks have been forced to deal with over and over again. And like you said, a lot of those inequities have been highlighted with in communities of color. And, you know, when things get bad, they get bad, exponentially for groups of folks that have already, you know, have it bad, they have a worse. So we really noticed that through the COVID response. We were seeing not a great uptake, vaccine, and communities of color, specifically our Latinx community in our Black and African American communities. And so we really stopped and, you know, did some information sharing, we did some community group gathering to really figure out like, what's, what's keeping folks the barriers that are real, the barriers that are imagined, you know, what's keeping folks in being able to access vaccines, and a lot of it was kind of like the three T's of trust technology and time. You know, we have early in public health, you always have the early adopters, you have the folks that are ready, willing and able to just get in line and are fighting clamoring over vaccine, and then we have the folks that are just aren't going to do it, that aren't going to adopt public health guidelines. And we know who those folks are. And then we also have the folks and our work is really focused on the folks who are on the fence that just really need, you know, maybe a conversation, they just need some more time to think about it. Maybe some more information. Maybe there's a physical barriers to getting to the site. So we really worked with our community partners like Central Latino and NAACP, and the ark, to really figure out like, how can we make these environments more welcoming in a place that doesn't feel threatening? I use this example all the time, when we first started our COVID response. We were at the Wayne County Fairgrounds, we had big white tents, National Guard was part of the response just in helping and you know, we have a big building behind this that says ice and so just having conversations with folks have been like what's, you know? What are the barriers and the cycle? Just look at the location. It's centralized. You're in, you know, downtown Eugene. So a lot of folks can't, you know, from Florence to Oak Ridge. Actually, Glynn County is the size of Connecticut. So there was transportation issues. There was just the facade itself. Like that's kind of a scary environment. If you're an early adopter, yeah. Okay, that's fine. This is what we have to do. But if you're slightly hesitant and are scared and don't know what's going to happen, don't understand the process. It doesn't feel like a trauma informed place to go. There could be other you know, there could be language barriers. We really took a step back to try and create a mobile team and to create a group of folks that we knew were trauma informed, and culturally humble, and we could have smaller, more intimate, you know, gatherings, vaccine events. We hosted town hall meetings, in a way to just share more information. We took time we slowed down and we really started To get a better response of folks of taking vaccines, especially in our Latin X communities in our African American communities, because we did it in a way that just made sense community, you know, it doesn't make sense to everyone to just line up in a vehicle and get something done. Sometimes you need to, you know, have the, the guidance of like your elders, okay. And yet, so we had a whole process with the Black community where we had an elders campaign, because like, as African American, I'm a Black woman, like, we really look to our elders for guidance. And, and so having a campaign and having folks get together that when he knew trusted in the communities to say, like, Hey, this is something that's like, okay, it's a safe space to ask all the questions, I had all the questions like, look at me, I'm still alive. So really taking the time to just slow down and work with the communities that we know, get overwhelmed again, and again, and again, because we don't feel, you know, say we don't feel, you know, just because, you know, sometimes public health rollouts are trying to get a large amount of people and get Community Health levels, doesn't mean that the same impact isn't going to be great when we can get one family of 10. You know, that's vaccine hesitancy, the amount of ripple effect that that what that does, with those families that are hesitant, and the situation is just absolutely amazing. So we've been working, like I said, closely with their community partners to be able to establish, you know, just kind of like, a partnership so that community based organizations can create their own environments that feel right, and we just kind of roll up as like our, you know, for the COVID response. It's like support, offer vaccines offer our literacy and help and information. You know, we do it in a way that's fun and exciting, and no pressure and not as scary. And it's really just really changed our partnerships with CBOs, and just being able to take a backseat of like letting community lead.
Hana Francis:Yeah, I can totally see that focus on sort of humanizing communities, instead of just seeing them as numbers and stats.
Olatorera Adeniji:Yeah, that does not feel good at all. Really, you know, it's really just about providing the space and like creating the space and letting you know, the resilience shine through, like, I'm not gonna sit here and lie and say that, you know, the resilience isn't remarkable to see after folks have like been forced to survive, you know, and so I think it really is time to just take a backseat as far as like, authorities go and be like, you know, what is good for your community? What is helpful for your community, you know, from us, because if you're just spouting out the same message over and over again, there's certain people that just aren't going to take the message, because this will resonate with them, and rightfully so.
Hana Francis:Right. And like, you know, you can, you can know that something's going to be good for a community on a technical level, but like, if, you know, like, if people don't want that for themselves, it's not, it's not going to happen, and it's actually going to feel harmful.
Olatorera Adeniji:Right? Yeah, we really try and make sure that we're not creating any more harm. And trying to make sure that we add like non transactional relationships to like if there's a community meeting that you want someone from community partnerships with yet just to hear the good that's going on, or the bad or whatever. We want to be in these spaces. And we want to know, you know, how we can help support the already amazing work that has been accomplished through, you know, being left behind, over and over again. So
Hana Francis:another area that the public health division is focusing on is the climate crisis, and other forms of environmental pollution, and environmental justice position would hopefully be addressing issues of environmental racism within the county because environmental harm and institutional racism are inextricably linked. This is something that can be seen all over the world. environmental racism is the term that signifies the disproportionate impacts of environmental hazards on communities of color. This is the consistent practice of companies dumping toxic waste in or near communities of color. This is polluting facilities like power plants and factories, being consistently located near communities or neighborhoods of color. This is bipoc communities under prioritized by government policy. Countless studies have found that race is often a more reliable indicator of proximity to pollution than income alone.
Olatorera Adeniji:Yeah, So actually, the great thing with the public health modernization is pumping more dollars into our environmental justice teams, we've just hired an environmental justice supervisor, and there's gonna be three positions that are hired underneath that. So I'm excited for EJ team, because that just really speaks to a lot of the root cause issues of why bipoc Folks are experiencing the problems that we're experiencing. Yeah, so I'm excited for them to get in here. And to add to and hopefully build off of our anti racism work. It's new, the Preparedness Program and departments that we have right now is more internal facing. So I'm excited to have some external facing work to work with, you know, community partners like beyond toxics, and NAACP folks that are already doing those really great work, that really great work within the community to be able to build off of that. So more to come on that.
Hana Francis:Awesome. Another thing, which I thought was kind of interesting is student debt. So so how does student debt manifest as a public health issue?
Olatorera Adeniji:So student debt manifests as a public health health issue, interestingly enough? You know, I, myself, like I've already mentioned, I'm a Black woman, and we are the most educated group of folks in America, assuming, you know, as far as like, degrees, higher education attainment goes. And so we're really bearing a disproportionate amount of debt in order to achieve those types of degrees and accolades, and yet still weren't painless, which is mind boggling. But the way that student debt immerse, you know, so right now, the Biden campaign, the Biden, whatever, has decided that they want to reverse 10 to $20,000 for student debt. Well, it turns out that, you know, white Americans don't have as much debt as other groups of Americans do Black Americans that next Americans, so just take off 10 to $20,000 debt might, you know, take away all of the debt for a white American, and it might only be a drop in the bucket for Latin X folks, or BIPOC folks. we know this, because traditionally, whiter folks make more money, they have more family wealth, and so they're taking out less loans, student loans than their, you know, bipoc counterparts. So the way that manifests is that after we've taken out more loans, then we try to get jobs. And the jobs are lower pain, we're struggling with more student debt, and we're just unable to have the same quality of life, we've got higher loan payments. You know, there's a lot of discrimination housing, there's a lot of different ways that it manifests and does not add to the value of life that we're told over and over again, that college, you know, does tend to do that, oh, if you get a job, sorry, if you go to college, you get a four year degree, you'll go ahead and you know, make all this money and life is gonna be great. When we're not, when Black folks and BIPOC folks aren't hired the same rate, when we're not paid the same amount. When we have more student debt, it becomes a systemic issue, and it becomes a, you know, a racially systemic issue because we're just not getting the same. It might be equal, we might be getting the same amount reduced, but it's not proportionate. So it's not equitable. So, and we did a piece on this recently in our CBO newsletter about, you know, how specifically for Black women, student debt is crippling, and how it's hard to make it out of a system that's, you know, obviously driven to disproportionately affect certain groups. And, you know, it just continues to drive the the narrative, when we don't give folks the same opportunities and access, and then it just creates generational implications. And just being able to not amass the same amount of wealth as your white counterparts is. It's problematic.
Hana Francis:Yeah, no kidding. Geez. Thanks for breaking that down. Like that. really amazing to see that like so clearly and concisely called out. So thank you. No problem. What are some public health issues that you notice in your community that maybe you didn't register as a public health issue? Email me at whitebirdmutualaid@gmail.com to share your thoughts. Tremendous thanks to Olatorera Adeniji from Lane County Public Health, and the important work that she is doing for the community. If you would like to know more about this program, you can visit the Lane County Public Health website at the links in the show description. Or you can also listen to the next episode to learn more about what the Community Partnerships Program does for our community. If you have any questions or comments, you can please reach out to me at whitebirdmutualaid@gmail.com. Thank you for listening to White Bird Mutual Aid. I'm Hana Francis.